Transit agencies have long sought to provide information about transit services to transit riders. This started as signs at bus stops, to schedules as bus stops and then to schedules and arrival times (estimated and schedules) that were available at bus stops, online, and on mobile computing devices. Transit riders have truly benefited from greater access to transit agency data.
What has remained unsolved is transit agencies benefiting from greater access to transit rider data. Transit agencies do not know the rider-status of their riders—are the riders at home, walking to a bus stop, in a new city, at a bus stop, on a bus, waiting for a transfer, etc. Sometimes a transit agency may know a trip that a transit rider is planning (although often this trip planning is anonymous) but they do not know specific progress throughout the trip or any status for trips that are not planned via trip planning technologies.
There thus remains a need for rider-status information to be obtained by transit agencies—and further to facilitate new and improved communication and exchange of transit data between transit agencies and transit riders.